Welcome To The Hermit's Desk

During my time at Brown Mackie, I was continually horrified at my fellow students writing abilities. I thought the endlessly jumbled sentences, slang, atrocious grammar, and inability to string together coherent reasoning were simply signs of being in a bad college. I mean, there's no way the following could POSSIBLY be a fair representation of the average college kid's literary skills. Right? Right?

"true they really don't care about there life's, so why do they have to try to take so many out with them. If they want to die and kill them self's for there cause, why don't they just kill them self's."

and "just check what their supose to check other than that i don't think they should any else then only that. just so there job and that it."

and "The two boy was being bullied and not been treat fair as the "popular kids" was. The boys later was said was pyscopaths."

But it turns out that that kind of writing is something college professors across the board have to wrestle with. In article after article after article, educators struggle with trying to catch students up to basic reading and writing skills. The skills that need to be taught are so basic the teachers often have to rely on middle school - or even grade school - materials to help their students learn to write.

It's shocking. It's disheartening. And it's such a large problem that it's damn near impossible to tell where to start fixing this. My classmates writing irritated the hell out of me, but as the school year went on, I started to get angry at the college that kept passing these students. The students honest-to-god thought they were writing at college level, and there Brown Mackie was, pretending right along with them so they could get their grubby hands on all of that sweet, sweet loan money.

The students didn't know any better. If they did, they damn sure had no reason to change. Why would they? They got their A unchallenged, without any confrontation about why they should be applying themselves to a higher standard.

I really, really want to blame student laziness and entitlement here. And there's no doubt that student laziness and entitlement is a factor. I'm dismayed at the number of student emails I read that demand special privileges or that ask questions in barely coherent form about things that are in the syllabus, jesus, would you just check the damn syllabus. But in reading how this is a problem for even recognized, prestigious schools, I can't help but rage and despair at the education system as a whole.

Somewhere along the line, long before these students stepped into higher education, there were countless schools behind them that passed these students and their dismal skills. I know that testing and funding tied to testing is a part of it. I know there's been a cultural change that makes students feel entitled to grades and considerations that they don't deserve. I know lots of things, but every time I re-read the tag where I documented my classmates writing, I still have to scrape my jaw off the floor with a spatula.

We're all a pretty verbose bunch here on LJ/DW. We've been writing for years. We read the shit out of anything that even looks remotely interesting or educational. Words are our calling. I understand that words are not everyone's calling. Some people really won't have to write anything more complicated than an email in their careers. But even EMAIL writing is taking a major hit.

That's a thread where various teachers share their most hilarious and annoying student emails. Read it and laugh. Or weep. Or both. Yeah, probably both. (It's a very long thread, two thousand pages. You have to move through the pages via the numbers on the bottom left, NOT the prev/next option on the right, which just takes you to another thread), but it is so worth it.

(Also from the same site, THIS thread, where teacher share their students most hilarious sentences and paragraphs. Pull out your box of tissues, for the tears will begin rolling.)

What are YOUR educational horror stories? Students you've taught, classmates you've had, coworkers who fail at the most basic of written communication? If we can't beat 'em, we may as well share lots of stories about them.

Part I

In Germany, studies and inquiries see the same problem rising for the German language like you describe here. Students not being able to spell correctly, write coherent sentences, not knowing the rules of basic orthography.Well, here things concentrate on detecting that problem already in the normal schools, not just when they already absolve college or university education or apprenticeship.But already that... Well, for me it's worth a headshake and a facepalm that can already become harmful for your health. 'Cause my brain's never had a heart for being stupid.I can understand if people have a hard time evaluating how things get spelled these days if they began to learn reading and writing before the big spelling reform that they decided on here anytime during the 90s.But those kids that are meant in these studies, they partly weren't even born when this found its entry into the German classes!So... it's not a thing of that, it's simply a thing of missing education, missing parental persistence in that topic, and missing ambition of the kids themselves. In general: A by-product of the modern style of upbringing in general that parentificates kids and that teaches the kids nothing. That acts like nothing is really important and that fails to teach basic personality traits to children that are needed in order to create ambitions at all to want anything in life themselves.Even I know that personality trait of young people wanting to be stupid when puberty is in full bloom in them, but compared to that idiots lurking around now, I guess those fools that I got to know were already like "they know the way the cat jumps, they only don't like to follow the path in this phase", but whenever it ends, they start again following it 'cause they see that's only what gets them further in life.Well, I guess my generation already fetched a little bit of the remains of the education system of the former GDR. Maybe that's why they still became acceptable in that part later, although they were such vagabonds in educational matters at times. (Real socialism always was a knowledge society, so education had a pretty high niveau and pedagogically tried its best efforts to get the most out of the people learning in it, author's note.)This really isn't around anymore. Lots of the teachers which studied then under real socialist rule have retired meanwhile. Only those are left who must have started their teaching path in the late 80s.Also, the education system in general has decayed pretty much since the turnaround which turned the teacher into the disadvantaged one when he really puts efforts into the kids he's teaching. Parents protect the cheeky spoiled brat-like behavior of their offspring against the teacher instead of taking it serious when he writes letters to them or invites them for a talk on a parents' evening. Teachers suffer violence, get ignored by their students... All that kind of shit.The tales from circumstances in middle schools which teach until year 10 (years in school) and let you leave with the middle degree graduation always made me shake my head, whenever I heard any of them... You better not call it "school", "lion cage" or "chaos" maybe are better terms.

And in West Germany, those circumstances must be around for quite longer, as I hear people older than me say often that West German people are pretty uneducated about the world, about technical things, about the former East also (well, that's due to brainwash propaganda for decades), in general they lack a lot of basic knowledge while - strangely! - literally being able to be engineers at the same time.It must be a thing valid for long 'cause - whatcha think the school shooting thing existed for here also?Not if it all was peace, love, happiness and sunshine...West Germany in general has a habit of gathering and fetching the educated people of the other countries instead of educating their own population - just because people ready, willing and skilled for work and unacquainted with their rights in another country, those you can make work for less than your own population...

Part II

...All of these political strategies also depicture their reflection in how things turn out in the present.No miracle that their own young people are no better useful than for destroying something, drinking and doing bullshit all the time. The state, reliable for the education system, doesn't invest in them, and so they are when they're adults - empty, useful for nothing, stupid like toast. Only they can play with their smartphones 'cause their parents will make sure that they get one in their lives...

Well, to end this comment with some conclusion: It's a complex problem. Partly those kids are to blame themselves, on the other hand again they're also not because it is a wider social problem. They are like born, but there is absolutely no purpose from society for them, and so it becomes that nobody invests in them, nobody gives them resonances and strengthens certain behavior that is contributing for good social climate, as well as for certain personality traits that make out wanting anything in life at all other than vegetating.Nobody tackles that problem seriously, so it stays the way it is - kids remain kids, even in their adult years, they're cognitively and intellectually under-developed, they give up early as soon as they feel frustration, they habor child-like inner feelings even long into their adult lives, they're unattentive, can't separate important from unimportant information, and generally fail to develop personality traits like ambition, persistence, standing their ground, honesty and - Well, in general they also fail to mature. To develop personality features that make them grow in skills as well as creatures. Last thing which is tightly linked to letting cognitive intelligence grow in general.

A lot of the education issues--at least in the US--can be directly attributed to the fear of failure. Think about it--all those children who get passed because nobody wants to damage their "self esteem." I know kids in high school, that really shouldn't have been allowed to graduate. But, because it was more important to keep them happy--rather than to educate them--they got away with it. Now, most of those kids work at McDonald's, and can't understand why nobody will hire them. I mean really, would *you* want to hire someone who speaks like a caveman? Or, one that cannot put together a coherent sentence?

Hell, my dad and brother are (or were) teachers. They've told me that failing students is nearly forbidden in some districts. The mere use of a red pen to make an "X" on a mistake can get them into trouble. Many times, the kids get "passing grades" just so they don't have to deal with paperwork.

Another problem, is that society as a whole, is too afraid to call them out on it. Stupidity seems to be a protected class, and actually *encouraged* and *rewarded* in some circles. Look at people like Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, Snooki, "Cash Me Ousside," and other flavor-of-the-month "celebrities." These losers have done nothing other than act like an idiot on camera--and get *rewarded* for it. Little wonder that there's no importance placed on education, and why people keep getting dumber.

My current manager at work couldn't string together a coherent thought in an email with a ball of twine and crazy glue.

One time my supervisor was about to address one of his emails, and I said "Don't even get me started on that email; the grammar alone is enough to make me seriously consider taking a mental health day."

I looked to my left, and the manager was sitting right. fucking. there.

Fortunately, he took it in good humor and I apologized saying that I was frustrated about other things and took it out improperly. But, yeeeeaaahhh..... I really gotta watch the trajectory of my foot sometimes.